Day 281 — Past The Halfway Point Of My Special Weight-Loss Diet And Loving It!

More than nine months have gone by since I started my special weight-loss diet on Valentine's Day. My goal was to be on this diet for 18 months and to lose 22 pounds by following my own custom diet based on Macrobiotics.

So far, it's working great! I've been very busy these last nine months, traveling on a couple of business-vacation trips, exploring new restaurants, and even going to the county fair. I am learning so much about how specific foods affect me, and how my body uses certain foods to increase my energy and stamina more and more. 

Whole grains are definitely the way to go if I want to lose weight — they are a sure thing. I've lost 18.6 pounds over this period of time and watched the scales fluctuate up and down in 1 to 2-pound increments each week depending on how much I ate at restaurants versus how much I ate at home. 

Also key to my weight loss has been a steady and increasing amount of movement, which included gardening, hiking, and walking in the fresh air.

During this time, my Gonstead chiropractor introduced me to the book, The End of Medicine, by Kaare Bursell, and I consequently started my own special Health Spa with ginger compresses and daikon baths four times a week. Finding daikon leaves in large quantities was quite a challenge and I probably would've had to wait another year to grow my own if it weren't for a produce manager at the New Leaf.

I took that book with me on my trips along with two other very helpful books, Food and Intuition, Volume 1 and Volume 2, by Julia Ferre. Stay tuned for book reports on all three.

My husband and I visited several new restaurants both on our trips and locally. Several stand out in my mind, such as Takara's Japanese Restaurant in Capitola that much to my surprise is now finally serving brown rice, and Kumi Japanese Restaurant in Las Vegas, Nevada that not only serves brown rice, it is also excellent, tender, and fresh brown rice! Geisha's Japanese Restaurant and Tea House in Capitola-by-the-Sea was a delightful surprise, serving artistically beautiful food including jasmine-brown-rice vegetarian rolls (sustainable sushi).

Similar to My Dream Diner — Burger Number Seven, I have a new dream I want to write about, called "The World Macrobiotic Kitchen And Store" in the Glass Pyramid Building, New York City. 

Next on my To-Do List: My first consultation appointment with Cynthia Briscoe at Macrobiotics America to begin another layer of my self-healing journey. I can hardly wait!

Related Blog Articles:
My Own Fat Camp
Getting Ready For My New Weight-Loss Diet
Two Years of No More Sugar

More Than Six Weeks Have Gone By Since The Start Of My Weight-Loss Diet

"It takes about six weeks of daily effort to effect a desired change, to reverse bad habits and/or create new ones," — so says Julia Ferre on page 32 of her book, Food And Intuition 101, Volume 1: Awakening Intuition.

And this is why I decided, when I was designing my special weight-loss plan, that I would be very strict for the first six weeks of my diet and wait until April 1st before I re-introduced any foods that are not completely whole grains and vegetables. After April 1st, this would include certain foods such as those made with processed whole grains (ground flour, rolled flakes, polenta, etc.) and pleasure foods like pizza.

It turns out that I have been completely and utterly satisfied with eating only whole grains and vegetables so far and I think that I want to continue with this!

I can't tell you how great this is making me feel. My body has been healing itself and discharging the toxins and excesses that it doesn't need. At about Week #3 or so, I had all the symptoms of a head cold except my energy levels were still high and my appetite was great! I still jumped out of bed every morning, blew my nose, drank some special tea, maybe chewed some gomasio for a headache to go quickly away, and then continued on with my day!

These days, I love planning what I'm going to eat, cooking it, photographing it, and most of all, eating it!  And yet, after I've eaten a meal, I don't feel the need to keep thinking about it — nothing was missing, and I was completely satisfied, and now I have lots of energy to do something else! Each meal has been lasting me until the next meal, four or five hours later. I haven't felt hungry or had any cravings or urges to binge on foods that are off my diet. (I think that chewing more than 100 times is contributing to this feeling of satiation and satisfaction.)

I love the challenge of becoming more efficient in my meal planning and kitchen cleanup, and of making sure that I have plenty of variety. I've even had some successful meals out and about on picnics and in restaurants. Every day, I look forward to trying something new — new grains and vegetables, new recipes, and new artistic ways to plate my food. This is so much fun!

Here's a list of what I've eaten so far and loved it all:

Whole grains:
amaranth (Breakfast on Day #41)
barley, purple prairie
brown rice, medium grain (Lundberg Golden Rose)
brown rice, long grain
brown rice, short grain
brown rice, Brown Thai Jasmine (Day #16)
brown rice, wild rice, Lundberg "Jubilee" rice blend
millet
oat groats
quinoa, traditional yellow
quinoa, Inca Red
teff 
wheat berries, red hard winter
wild rice


Processed whole grains: 
cornmeal (Dinner on Day #63, Day #64, Day #65)
old fashioned oatmeal (Breakfast on Day #61)
polenta, corn (Dinner on Day #61)
rye, Farmer's Market rye bread with cranberries (Lunch on Day #52)
veggie burger on whole wheat bread (no lettuce, tomato, onion, or cheese) (Lunch on Day #36)
veggie patty, house-made on whole wheat bun (Dinner on Day #55)
veggie patty, made with leftovers and crushed cornflakes (Dinner on Day #62)
whole grain crust (wheat, rye, oat), homemade pizza (Dinner on Day #66)
whole-wheat, Ak Mak Organic Whole Wheat Sesame Crackers (Breakfast on Day #54, Day #64) 
whole-wheat 4-seed bagel with butter (Dessert on Day #55) 
whole-wheat sesame millet bread, Vital Vittles (Lunch on Day #59)

Processed partial grains:
Plain fettucini pasta (Dinner on Day #56)

Vegetables:
avocado, guacamole (Dinner on Day #64)
baby bok choy
broccoli
broccolini (baby broccoli)
brussels sprouts
burdock root
cabbage
carrot
carrot top greens
cauliflower
celery
collard greens (first time, Dinner on Day #63, Day #64, Day #65)
daikon radish
dandelion greens from our garden
garlic 
green onions
green pimento-stuffed olives (Day #10)
kale, lacinato (dinosaur)
kale, red
lettuce, butter
lettuce, iceberg
Lettuce tofu veggie wraps (Lunch on Day #43)
mushrooms, homemade pizza (Dinner on Day #66)
olives, homemade pizza (Dinner on Day #66)
onion
onion, Beer battered Crispy Onion Rings (Lunch on Day #36)
peas, yellow split
pumpkin, Kabocha
shallots 
Squashes with Garlic and Olive Oil (Day #16) 
sunchokes (Jerusalem artichokes) from the garden
sweet potato fries (Dinner on Day #55)
sweet potato, Japanese
sweet potato, jewel yam
turnip, from the garden
Vegetarian spring rolls, "skinned" (cabbage, shiitake mushroom, carrot with breading removed) (Lunch on Day #43)

Sea Vegetables, Beans, Nuts, and Seeds:
almonds
cashews 
hazelnuts (filberts)
kombu seaweed 
lentil vegetable soup (Dinner on Day #37) 
lentils, black beluga
miso, brown rice
miso, country barley
miso, mellow white
peanuts
pumpkin seeds 
refried beans (Lunch on Day #37)
sesame seeds
sunflower seeds
wakame seaweed 

Processed partial beans:
tofu, Wildwood's Savory Sprou-Tofu (Lunch on Day #58)
Tofu Broccoli (Dinner on Day #30)

Special sauces, seasonings, cooking oils, and condiments:
basil, fresh
cheese, homemade pizza (Dinner on Day #66)
coconut oil
lemon garlic tahini dressing
lemon miso olive oil sauce, Julia's (Day #68)
lemon tahini sauce
olive oil 
peanut butter, hot water, soy sauce (Dinners on Day #48, Day #57)
seaweed gomasio (daily) 
sesame seed oil
soy sauce, Ohsawa (daily)
tomato sauce, from the garden, frozen  (Day #10)
tomato sauce, homemade pizza (Dinner on Day #66)
umeboshi plums
ume plum vinegar
Yamazaki California Dried Umeboshi Salt Plum, 2004 (Day #16)

Beverages:
bancha tea
Bigelow's Mint Medley tea (spearmint, peppermint, rose hips, lemon peel, hibiscus) (Dinner on Day #56)
Bi Lo Chun Green Tea — "Green curls of Spring" light green tea (Day #16)
chamomile tea
coffee latte with whole milk (Dessert on Day #55) 
Ginger Tea (ginger, lemongrass, licorice, fennel) (Breakfast on Day #61)
green tea
kukicha tea (daily)
Kuzu Drink, Zen Macrobiotics, by George Ohsawa (Day #23)
lemon juice and hot water
Oolong tea (Dinner on Day #30)
Organic Echinacea Plus tea (Day #20)
peppermint and white-sage tea (Lunch on Day #14)
Ume-Sho-Kuzu Drink No. 325, on page 95, Zen Macrobiotics, by George Ohsawa (Days #19, #20, #21, #24, #25)


Oh, and by the way, I've lost ten pounds. This diet is the BEST!


Related Blog Articles:
Day #1 Of My Weight-Loss Diet
Happy New Year Of The Snake — Finally Letting Go Of 22 Pounds Of Excess Weight
My Own Fat Camp
My Special Weight-Loss Diet Plan For 18 Months Started On Valentine's Day, 4-14-2013
My Daily Diet Report 
 

Alphabetical List Of Foods On My Weight-Loss Diet

These are the foods that I am allowing on my diet for the next 6 weeks (until April 1, 2013) and also for the next 18 months (until August 14, 2014) — provided they are available in season:

Whole Grains, Organic:
• Amaranth (Gold Mine Natural Foods)
• Barley, Bronze (Gold Mine Natural Foods)
• Barley, Ethiopian (Gold Mine Natural Foods)
• Barley, Golden Waxy (Gold Mine Natural Foods)
• Barley, Purple Prairie (Timeless Foods)
• Brown rice, basmati (Lundberg Family Farms)
• Brown rice, jasmine (Lundberg Family Farms)
• Brown rice, long (Lundberg Family Farms) 
• Brown rice, medium (Golden Rose, available in bulk, Lundberg Family Farms)
• Brown rice, short (Lundberg Family Farms)
• Brown rice, sweet (available in bulk, Lundberg Family Farms)
• Buckwheat groats
• Corn on the Cob
• Millet
• Oat groats
• Quinoa, traditional
• Quinoa, Inca red
• Rye berries
• Teff
• Wild rice (Lundberg Family Farms)

(NOTE: no ground flour, rolled flakes, or polenta until after 4/1/2013)

Vegetables:
• Bok choy
• Broccoli 
• Broccolini (baby broccoli)
• Brussels sprouts
• Burdock root
• Cabbage, Chinese 
• Cabbage, green
• Cabbage, purple 
• Carrots
• Cauliflower
• Celery
• Corn on the cob
• Cucumber 
• Daikon white radish
• Dandelion greens
• Edamame  
• Fennel
• Garlic
• Ginger root
• Green beans (fresh from the garden)
• Green onions (scallions)
• Kale, curly
• Kale, dinosaur
• Kale, green
• Kale, red
• Leeks
• Lettuce (including bib, butter, iceberg, leaf, romaine, etc.) 
• Onions
• Parsnip
• Peas, green split, dried
• Peas, snow
• Peas, yellow split, dried
• Pumpkins (see squash, winter) 
• Red radishes
• Shallots
• Squash, summer (yellow, yellow crookneck, pattypan, button, zucchini, etc.)
• Squash, winter (including acorn, butternut, buttercup, delicata, blue hokkaido, kabocha, sugar pie pumpkin, red kuri, turban, etc.)  
• Sunchokes (Jerusalem artichokes) (fresh from the garden) 
• Sweet potato, Japanese
• Sweet potato, Hannah
• Turnip
• Yam, Garnet
• Yam, Jewel 
• Zucchini (see also squash, summer) 

Beans and legumes:
• Aduki beans (azuki, adzuki, aduki)
• Chickpeas (garbanzo beans)
• Lentils, black beluga (Timeless)
• Lentils, brown
• Lentils, green
• Lentils, orange/yellow
• Peanuts (on special occasions) 

Nuts and Seeds:
• Almonds
• Cashews
• Hazelnuts (filberts)
• Pecans
• Pumpkin seeds 
• Sesame seeds
• Sunflower seeds
• Walnuts

Sea Vegetables:
• Arame
• Dulse 
• Kombu (Rising Tide Sea Vegetables)
• Nori (Rising Tide Sea Vegetables)
• Wakame (Rising Tide Sea Vegetables)

Condiments and Seasonings:
Ohsawa Nama Shoyu, Organic Unpasteurized Soy Sauce, Gold Mine Natural Foods
Seaweed Gomasio, Eden Foods
Ume plum vinegar, Eden Foods
Umeboshi salt plums, Eden Foods
Celtic Sea Salt, light gray unrefined, Selina Naturally 

Special Occasion Spices and Extracts:
Almond extract
Anise extract
Cardamom
Cayenne pepper
Chili pepper
Cinnamon
Cloves 
Cream of tartar
Cumin
Nutmeg
Pepper, black
Pepper, white
Vanilla bean

Dried or Fresh Herbs and Teas:
bancha tea
basil
bay leaves
green tea
kukicha twig tea
lemon balm
oregano
parsley
rosemary
sage
saffron
thyme

Peels, rinds, and juice for flavoring:
lemon
orange

Related blog articles:
The First Six Weeks Of My Weight-Loss Diet
My Own Fat Camp
Lemon Balm, A Friendly Cheerful Herb
Vegetables For Centering
My Notes On The Macrobiotic Centering Diet

My Special Weight-Loss Diet Plan For 18 Months Started on Valentine's Day, 2-14-2013

My goal is to lose 22 pounds as I follow a self-customized diet for 18 months based on macrobiotics. I'll be keeping a daily record of my diet here in two blogs (Food Santa Cruz and My Daily Diet Report) and weighing in once a week to watch my progress.

Here are the key points in my plan:
• Drink a hot cup of water when I get up in the morning.
• Eat 3 meals per day.
• Chew each bite at least 100 times, 200 times would be better.
• Eat until I'm satisfied (with no worries about quantity).
• Eat whole grains and fresh, seasonal vegetables that are organic and the best quality as possible, as listed here: Alphabetical List Of Foods On My Weight-Loss Diet.
• Once or twice a day, have miso (probiotic) in a soup or broth.
• Eat wakame or kombu sea vegetables on a regular basis.
• Supplement my meals as desired with nuts, seeds, lentils, chickpeas, split peas, aduki beans, and Bio-K+ probiotics.
• Drink when thirsty and after a meal — water, tea (kukicha, bancha, or herbal), or occasionally water with lemon juice.
• Cook with sesame, olive, and coconut oils (organic, unrefined)
• Season with unrefined sea salt, natural soy sauce, miso, gomasio, and ume plum vinegar, and occasionally season with lemon, orange, cinnamon, ginger, garlic, black pepper, and other spices. 
• Exercise as much as possible, especially after meals.

After six weeks, on April 1st, 2013, I will gradually introduce foods made with whole-grain flours (especially organic flours in my homemade products) as I desire. I will also be adapting a more flexible travel-plan to allow for the foods available in the places I visit, so that I won't "tweak out" if I'm traveling and can't find the "perfect" foods to eat — I'll simply increase the amount of chewing and enjoy! 

About Exercise:
• Walking is my preferred mode of exercise — fast enough to work up a sweat but not so fast that it forces me to breathe through my mouth for air. I love to walk!
• Gardening is my other preferred mode of exercise — I love to garden so much that I'll often lose all track of time and can be out there for hours!
• Housecleaning, especially cleaning floors and windows, is another mode of exercise that I enjoy doing.
• As a backup plan, whenever the weather is interfering, the indoor stationary bike is another one of my preferred modes of exercise.

About Foods And Beverages Not On My Diet:
• Alcohol, such as wine and beer, is not on my diet and I'm okay with that. I'm such a lightweight anyway when it comes to drinking my favorite stout or pinot noir — I can only handle 1 or 2 ounces at a time without getting too tipsy, dizzy, or a zillion hot flashes. So, I won't miss it in the next year and a half!
• Coffee is not on the diet. 
• White flour, simple sugars, syrups, fruit juices (except the occasional lemon), and all fruits are not on the diet. No fruit!
• Chocolate and cocoa, unsweetened, no longer offer any appeal to me, so they're off the list too.

About Traveling:
• When we're on the road, I will attempt to bring my own food as much as possible.
• If my food choices in a restaurant aren't perfect, I'll either eat it or not, and if I do eat it, I'll chew it very very well.

About Keeping A Daily Report:
• Already I've discovered how much fun this is! I love to take pictures and document everything that I'm seeing — and photographing my meals is already something I've been doing during our travels. Now, I get to do it at home too! and the challenge is to come up with more picture-perfect meals — I'm learning how to "plate" my food in more artistic and creative ways. I fully expect to see a big improvement by the end of these 18 months!

Related Blog Articles:
MY DAILY DIET REPORT
MY OWN FAT CAMP

Day #8 — Leftovers Again?

The Purple Prairie barley that I reheated for my dinner today doesn't really count as "leftovers," I don't think, since I had only eaten a little of it yesterday when it was still undercooked. But whether I call it leftovers, or pre-cooked, or something else, it really doesn't matter to me, because it was delicious! 

I warmed it up with a little of the leftover rice and wild rice from this morning's breakfast in a small frying pan coated lightly with sesame oil. I drizzled a little water (not too much!) over the grains, turned the flame down to low, and covered it with a lid, allowing it to warm up while I boiled some water for my tea and heated up a few pieces of the Japanese sweet potatoes in the small toaster oven.

The flavors of the onions and celery with the barley came through, adding a delicate sweetness to the dish. And the sweet potatoes with their faint coconut flavor contributed a more robust, deeper sweetness to the meal. This time, the barley was well-cooked, soft, and tender, and yet it still had a unique texture to it that was fun to chew. In the end, I must say that leftovers can be a wonderful life-saver when you get home late and hungry for dinner!

Julia Ferre gives some excellent tips and recipes for re-using leftovers in her book, Food and Intuition 101, Part 1, on page 218. For example, she suggests using a reheating process that is complementary to how the dish was originally prepared, such as the oven for my roasted sweet potatoes!

As I ate my excellent dinner this evening, I reflected on the other meals that I had today — including a nice meal at P.F. Chang's where I had a small bowl of brown rice, a few pieces of undercooked broccoli, and a delicious side dish of Lemon Scented Brussels Sprouts that had been "shaved" into very tiny slices (that was something new!) — and then I suddenly remembered the great news I received this morning when I stepped on the scales to do my very first weekly weigh-in.

I've lost 2.6 pounds — and now I feel even more enthusiastic about this plan!

Related Blog Articles:
MY DAILY DIET REPORT — Day #8 Of My Weight-Loss Diet
Lunch At P. F. Chang's (1-4-2011)
Searching For Brown Rice In Restaurants
Green Vegetables (2-8-2011)
 

Quinoa, Millet, Sweet Potatoes, and Purple Prairie Barley — All On Day #7

This turned out to be a great day for food, here on Day #7 of my special weight-loss diet!

It started with a simple bowl of miso broth and a freshly cooked blend of quinoa and millet. (I'd say the ratio was about two parts quinoa to 1 part millet.)

I had more of the quinoa-millet mix for lunch along with two kinds of sweet potatoes that I oven-roasted in coconut oil. So easy to make and so extraordinarily delicious to eat!

Then, for dinner I cooked up a pot of organic Purple Prairie Barley, which according to Timeless Natural Food, originated from Tibet.

I started with two onions and two stalks of celery, chopped and sauteed in sesame oil, and then added the barley and its overnight-soaking water, and 3 big pieces of kombu from Rising Tide Sea Vegetables. Having cooked barley a lot before, I figured the kombu would help to tenderize it. And for the same reason, I omitted adding any salt, which could make the barley tough.  Nevertheless, it still wasn't cooked enough by the time I was wanting to eat my dinner, so I made a small soup with some of it and some mellow white miso, which has a lovely sweet and sour taste, and had that with some more of the leftover quinoa and millet mix.

It took more than two hours to cook the barley to a soft, tender stage and it tasted delicious. I put it away in the refrigerator, thinking of possible ways to fix it for tomorrow's meals. And that got me to thinking once again about the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk's annual Clam Chowder Cookoff!

Related Blog Articles:
MY DAILY DIET REPORT — Day #7 Of My Weight-Loss Diet
The Annual Clam Chowder Cookoff (2-25-2011)
Boston Non-Clam Chowder (2-25-2011)
Manhattan Non-Clam Chowder (2-25-2011)
Santa Cruz Non-Clam Chowder (2-6-2012)

Carrots Fresh From The Garden On Day #6

We dug up the last of the carrots this morning before the gophers could finish them off. This was the best crop that Michael has grown so far. Fat, juicy, and delicious, and loads of them too! Plenty to share with those pesky gophers? I don't think so! I'd rather if they'd concentrate on eating other things, like poison oak for example! And blackberry roots!

I love carrots. Always have. Except that when I was a kid, they had to be raw. That makes sense, considering how much more yang I was then. Today, carrots are one of my most favorite vegetables, cooked, raw, or baked in a cake!

The carrot is one of the most yang of all vegetables, because it grows slowly, vertically under the ground, and it's orange. What else? It's one of the most yang of all the root vegetables too, because of its color, its shape, and its size, and probably for other reasons too. The carrot's yang qualities are especially great during the cold winter months. Carrots are also "generally alkaline-forming," which is good for balancing with acid-forming grains. (See The Acid And Alkaline Dimension Of Food, Part 1.)

I love cooking and eating carrots "nitsuke" style, as described by George Ohsawa in his book, Zen Macrobiotics. For my lunch today, I grated the carrots into tiny pieces, sauteed them in sesame oil for a few minutes, added pink Utah sea salt, covered the pan, and let them cook in their own juices for about 9 minutes more. I didn't cook them the whole-nitsuke way to juicelessness, because I wanted that bit of juicy yin today. The flavor was incredibly delicious.

Carrots are included in the basic macrobiotic diet and they're also in the more restrictive macrobiotic centering diet. Come to think of it, these first six weeks of my special weight-loss diet is very close to the macrobiotic centering diet (with the exception of Bio-K Plus, for strengthening my digestive system).


Related Blog Articles:
MY DAILY DIET REPORT — Day #6 Of My Weight-Loss Diet
What Is The Macrobiotic Centering Diet?
My Notes About The Macrobiotic Centering Diet